The Buffalo Blog

Yahoo sinking?

The continued exodus of top-level staff from Yahoo and announcement of planned restructure today is an ongoing reminder of where Yahoo came from – the bedroom not the boardroom. Jerry Yang’s reluctance to sell his soul to Microsoft, that emblem of the corporate world (in a deal that could have made him a lot of money), is another salient symptom of the bedroom enterprise gone big.

What almost all of the founders of today’s booming ‘social enterprises’ and survivors of the dot com crash have in common is that they have been there from the start. These companies are their children and their ‘parents’ are loathe to relinquish control to giant interlopers.

Rather than hand over the keys to Microsoft, and all the company stands for, Yang was much more happy to lay down arms and ‘partner’ with Google, a company of similar beginnings and ethos.

Likewise the ongoing exit of Yahoo management is generally linked to unrest over the direction Yahoo is taking its subsidiary companies: the founders of Flickr and Delicious left just last week.

One can only hope that Yahoo finds the right direction for both its staff and customers and stops haemorrhaging executives before it’s too late.

Lisbon and the Irish brick wall

One waits with baited breath and quiet mirth at the as yet uncertain outcome of the latest challenge to face the Lisbon treaty. I speak of course of Great Wall of Ireland that the treaty has just run into.

While seemingly little could be done to prevent this situation, politicians must have known what was coming and dreaded the outcome. Irish constitution dictates that the Treaty be put to referendum and the result was pretty much assured – a resounding NO.

According to various commentators the country, formerly the poster child for EU membership, has lost something of its economic spark over recent months. This can’t have gone unnoticed by the public who evidently have become a little disillusioned with EU membership and are evidently loathe to hand over any more power to Brussels.

Like a dog with a bone Brussels isn’t going to give up without a fight. However, strategies for overcoming the Irish’s commendably democratic decision aren’t forthcoming. The most credible solution proposed so far is to simply keep on asking. The theory I believe is to appeal to Irish caprice and hope they’ll just change their minds – in the end they’ll have to say yes won’t they?

The Olympics - Destined for trouble some say...

Front pages today continue the noble pessimistic tradition in the UK press of boldly publicising failure. The relish with which this task is approached is truly astounding.

Today’s particular mishap comes courtesy of funding problems at the Olympic park. We’ve already had various budget reassessments from the Culture Secretary but this one comes from the private sector side of the fence. The private arm of the funding arrangement for the park is having trouble raising funds due to those increasingly reticent financial markets.

I can only cross my fingers and hope that this isn’t the start of another high profile government project gone wrong and that the media don’t get too accustomed to Olympics bashing as we approach 2012. Sad it would be to see the initial vigour and optimism about the Olympics crushed by continued focus on failure to meet deadlines, funding targets, dodgy logos and the like.

The Olympics is a momentous event and we should be proud that it’s coming to our wonderful city. It is a chance for Britain to show that it can still cut it on a global stage, that is can get things right from time to time

However, as the worldwide media prepares to scrutinise China, in 2012, all eyes will be on us. What we need is a healthy dose of optimism and a liberal helping of the highest quality management we can deliver to ensure we don’t end up with a stadium sized egg on our faces while the world looks on.

Achieving the right 'Phorm-ula'

The continuing controversy over Phorm (the advertising service secretly trialled by BT to track and target ads based on internet surfing patterns) highlights exactly where so many advertisers, new wave advertising services and social networks, desperate to wring money out of their service, are going wrong. Two elements are continually prevalent, those of awareness and trust – do users know what they’re being signed up for and do they trust that it is both legitimate, secure and won’t see their details sold to every Tom, Dick and Harry that comes begging.

The trouble is that consumers either don’t perceive this trust in the first place due to clandestine tactics of those less scrupulous marketers or they initially trust the company or service but it is promptly taken away when advertising comes into the equation especially when it is done ‘under the radar’.

A prime example of this is Facebook and its ‘revolutionary’ yet universally condemned, Beacon advertising service. The trouble is that users never signed up to Facebook to be plied with advertising and, as such, its ‘Beacon’ advertising service was destined for controversy from the word go. The decision to make it an opt-out rather than opt-in technology was one step too far for users, feeling aggrieved at having the service forced upon them. This action was truly damaging to what could have been a highly successful advertising product.

Predictably people were rather annoyed about Beacon sparking reams of bad press, a swift backtrack by Zuckerberg and a failure of the service to truly take off. One blog prints reports (though unconfirmed) of current click-through rates of just 0.04%, a pretty abysmal average. And while poor click-through rates obviously aren’t all due to distrust of Facebook, the secretive way in which Beacon was implemented definitely had an effect on the success of the system.

Now we find Phorm is trying similar tactics which also have blown up in their faces. Its secret trials with BT have created such a media furore that the EU may intervene and punish.

Online advertisers need to recognise that transparency is the key; keeping users fully appraised of what they’re signing up for is the only way to build the trust that might, with luck, lead to success. Launch a service in an ill-considered, secretive and invasive way and it’s simply doomed to failure and rightly so.

A sign of the times?

Last week saw another milestone in the changing face of offline news with The Times’ big revamp. The move sees the paper continue to distance itself from its broadsheet past, but is it headed in the right direction?

From the new opinion columns on page 2 it’s obvious where the editorial direction is going. The paper is moving towards the much maligned ‘viewspaper’ model putting its writers’ opinions above its traditionally impartial news coverage.

Declining readership and consequently ad revenues continue to drive these radical newspaper overhauls in an attempt to slow this irresistible decline. The trouble is that the decline can’t be stopped and that papers might be going about this the wrong way.

The exodus of many paper readers to the internet and the wealth of opinion to be found there has made many outlets think that views are all that readers want. But it isn’t, and the consequences are bad for the health of the UK media and bad for those of us who like to make up our own minds.

Yes blogs are popular as many people love to write, hear about and debate different views but people also value unbiased and neutral coverage of the happenings of the day. People aren’t moving online because they only want opinion - it’s just the way things are going – smart phones, laptops and so on have made it much more easy to simply log on than go any buy a paper.

Rather than chasing that unachievable format that is going to reverse the offline media’s fortunes, papers must recognise there will be no return to the good ol’ days. However, they should continue to cater for those that still want a hard copy whilst respecting the fact that most still want the opportunity to make up their own minds.

Digital graveyards – keeping your online persona up to date

The internet is now a firmly established part of our everyday lives. Over the years as it has made itself indispensable to our business and social lives as post, radio, television, meetings, phone and even human interaction have all made their respective transitions to the internet. However, alongside the more beneficial sides of the internet, other less useful aspects of the world are also beginning to show up in cyberspace.

One of the most annoying of these is cyber littering: discarding old websites without removing them from the internet. There they sit like online graveyards marking the history of the web – an old news site, a site for a specific event, an ageing company website. All too often one stumbles across these lingering sites creating confusion for visitors and making an organisation look lazy or out of date.

Why is it that people and companies treat the web like a dumping ground for their ancient websites? Many companies must have simply forgotten about these websites, continuing to pay for hosting year-on-year for something that will never be used again.

Not only is this a waste of money but neglecting to remove these websites simply creates a bad image for an organisation and spreads confusion amongst site visitors. Ageing websites left online are worse than an infrequently updated corporate site and make an organisation look lazy and lax.

To all those that have identified themselves as cyber litter louts – do yourselves a favour and clean up!